How the 1960s cattle plague shook the UK

Charles Arthur looks back at the five-month-long Great Cattle Plague, which saw 442,000 animals slaughtered and even today is still the subject of angry discussion in rural circles

A keeper at Oxford Zoo gives Rosie the elephant a disinfectant footbath (Getty)

It was 1967: Britain had started colour television broadcasts, from the Wimbledon tennis tournament in summer. Then on 25 October a cow fell ill on a farm near the market town of Oswestry in Shropshire.

That was the beginning of an epidemic that only ended five months later, with the farming business on its knees and huge areas of the country covered by overlapping five-mile exclusion zones.

A total of 442,000 animals had been slaughtered in 2,364 separate outbreaks. Roughly £150m – a huge amount at the time – was spent on slaughter costs and lost sales; farmers received £27m in compensation.